


A Study In Monsters

by NotYourHousekeeperDear



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotYourHousekeeperDear/pseuds/NotYourHousekeeperDear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is back, but so are the monsters...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study In Monsters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoSherlocked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoSherlocked/gifts).



Sherlock was back. Pacing around the Baker Street flat, ranting on the sofa. Lestrade visited them more often now, and Mrs Hudson poked in more too. Just checking he really was there. And he really was. Sherlock was back. With his high cheekbones and his long coat with collar turned up, and his rants about his superior mind. Sherlock was back. But so were the nightmares.

They came to John the first night of his return. Monsters with severed limbs and blown apart guts. This time, the monsters fell, long and slow, face down on the ground. First he was watching the monsters, crouched away from the scene in terror, next he was falling with them. He woke up in his upstairs bedroom, lying in a pool of sweat, screaming.

Sherlock was back. A week or two passed and he asked John to come with him on a case. 

“You are going to love this one John, it’s just up your alley.” Sherlock said. His body was lithe, poised for action, just as it had always been before they rushed off in a cab to a crime scene.

“OK” replied John. That was easier than saying no. He didn’t move from his chair.

“Well come on then John,” Sherlock said sharply, putting on his scarf. “We really haven’t got all day”

John blinked and stood up. Without thinking he put on his leather jacket and followed Sherlock down the stairs and into the awaiting cab.   
In the cab, Sherlock smiled at John, and he found himself smiling back. A tingle of the old excitement whispered on his skin. This is who they were after all, wasn’t it. Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson, world-renowned consulting detectives. He even hoped this would be a tricky one, one that would capture Sherlock’s interest and his own sense of adventure. 

Then he saw the body. 

A pool of dark red blood oozed from beneath the figure of a slim woman in a grey business suit. She had been stabbed in the chest and abdomen repeatedly, her skirt was hitched up and her legs were bruised. The monster had sat on top of her whilst he did his butchering and God knows what else. The woman’s face was frozen in a scream of agony and desperation.  
John blinked.

The monster was still there.

Sherlock was saying something to him, his voice bubbling away as he circled the body and made his mental notes. But John’s attention was on the dark figure sitting on the woman, a vulture eating the spoils. His mouth was dripping with the woman’s blood.

“GET HIM OFF HER!” John screamed.

The monster laughed, the evil sound creeping into John’s bones.

“GET HIM OFF HER!” John screamed and screamed. 

And then it went white.

When he woke up, it was still white. A white hospital bed and white sheets. The wall was cream with a picture of a beach scene and a dog playing in the waves. 

A nurse took his temperature and gave him an injection. The monsters were sleeping, snoring on their big fluffy pillows. John closed his eyes.

The voices spoke quietly around him, with snatches filtering into his consciousness.

_“Delayed post-traumatic stress reaction. Very common in ex- military, especially if there have been re-traumatising events.”_

_“Poor boy… The shock of Sherlock coming back was just too much... Can’t wait till he comes back home so I can make him a nice cup of tea and a few biscuits. That will fix him up.”_

_“Only my brother would fake his own death, come back to life three years later, and expect everyone else to just get on with it.”_. 

“John”

Sherlock’s warm baritone cut through the others. John put his hand out from under his hospital blanket. He felt a firm squeeze of pressure close around his fingers.

“Hold my hand,” whispered John, eyes still closed.

The hand stayed and the monsters let John sleep.

In his dreams, the monsters danced again. One was a women, her chest bleeding, the other could only be Moriaty, a flamboyant figure in a Westwood suit. The two waltzed together through the night, whilst John looked on in terror. When he could bear it no longer, he pushed through into consciousness.

“Why?” he asked. He turned his head a met a pair of green blue eyes. 

Sherlock gulped.

“WHY!” John yelled. “WHY!”

Sherlock reached for his hand again. Ah, that was good. The warmth of his hand settled him.

“I think you might need to go now, sir,” a stern voice said, “He needs his rest, and visiting hours are almost over”

“No!” said John, holding on to his hand tighter, “Please don’t go. No!”

“Maybe stay a little longer then, but just hold his hand. The psychiatrist said he wasn’t ready to talk yet” said the nurse.

When the monsters swarmed around him this time, pushing him into the dank murky pool, the hand pulled him out.

John opened his eyes and looked at Sherlock, sitting by his bed, his warm hand still steadying him.

"Thank you." John said.

"Of course," replied Sherlock, his eyes wide in surprise.

John smiled and drifted, for the first time in what felt like years, into peaceful, dreamless sleep.

He kept his eyes closed and felt for the hand as he drifted in and out.

_. “His brain activity and heart rate are back to a normal pattern, that's really great news"_

_"Don't you want to go home, Sherlock love, you've been here for days. I'll stay with him"_

_"Stubborn boy... You'll make yourself ill with worry"_. 

When the voices, quietened, John opened his eyes to find Shelock gazing at him intensely.

"You know, I saw monsters too,” he said in a low voice, his gaze not leaving John's face. "When I was in hiding, actually almost every night for the first year. And each time they came for me, they hurt you to get to me. " Sherlock paused, and reached for John's hand.

" That was Moriaty's game, his final problem. Here was someone I loved more than myself, and they only way I could protect him was to leave him. Love was death, and death was love." Sherlock let go of his hand. 

"Sherlock" John gasped. "It's OK, you don't need..."

"No, John, I need to say it. When I came back I thought I had solved the problem, found a way you could live, and I could be alive too. So not only was there love, but there was hope. What a fool I was. The damage had already been done"

“You’re here now,” John smiled.

Sherlock bent over and placed a warm kiss on his forehead.

“What a pair we are.” Sherlock’s smile was bittersweet, as the monsters slinked off defeated for now, into the recesses of John’s mind.  
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………  
The night before Christmas.

“Where did you put the turkey legs? I need to get the dinner on.” John stared into a crowded fridge as he screamed to Sherlock from the kitchen.

“Behind my feet” replied Sherlock calmly.

John slammed the fridge shut and stormed to the door way of living room where Sherlock was pacing up and down.

“Your feet? Your feet,” repeated John.

“Yes, my feet” replied Sherlock, he stopped pacing to turn and look at John. “Molly donated some spares from the morgue for me. Very kind of her, I must say.”

“Come over here,” said John.

“What?” replied Sherlock, walking up to John.

“Mistletoe,” he smiled, reaching for his hands and pulling him into a long and sensual kiss.

When they let go of each other, Sherlock beamed at John, speechless for once.

“And we’re getting take-away,” John said calmly, although his heart was still beating a million times a minute.

“Take- away it is,” replied Sherlock, reaching for John and pulling him close into another embrace. 

It was their first Christmas together in three years, and there were no monsters to be seen. 

THE END.


End file.
